"Blitzkrieg Commander IV - first thoughts." Topic

As promised, I bought a copy of BKC IV from Leon at Fiasco, in Leeds, on Sunday. Last night I gave it a first read through, and knowing how the basic game worked from previous editions it proved to be a very easy first read of what seems to be a well laid out rule set. The only bit I had to read twice, to thoroughly understand, was the 'Reconnaissance' section; this is the hardest part of the rules to understand but, then again, I'm a bear of very little brain and even I got there without help in the end.

My knowledge of army lists for this period is generally quite good, and a flick through the lists (the ones I would be more familiar with) through up no glaring mistakes or omissions.

So, well done to all. A nicely presented package. It looks, at first sight like a pretty robust upgrade to the BKC system. I look forward to playing them. When I do, I'll do a full blog report on how the upgraded rules played.

James

Thanks for the review, glad you like them! I'll keep an eye out for a future blog report!

My knowledge of army lists for this period is generally quite good, and a flick through the lists (the ones I would be more familiar with) through up no glaring mistakes or omissions.

should be "…threw up…." not "…through up….".

Our group has played it twice now and are pretty impressed. I wrote a quick review of the rules and there's a two page battle report in issue 52 of Warning Order: PDF link

How does the version compare with the modern set?

actually "revealed" would be a better choice than a synonym of "vomited up" :)

I look forward to the longer review.

Played it a few times, having previously played 2nd Ed.; like it enough to have put together one completely new army (1939 Poles) and made a start on 1940 British infantry. Rule book is easy to follow and it is generally easy to find answers to queries that come up in games. My only criticism is that there seems to have been a bit of sloppy proof reading in the army lists, with some columns obviously shifted sideways, but the errors are so obvious it is easy to correct.
One criticism that one of our group has is that it should not be so easy to remove hits. He wants a house rule that units retain half of hits received in a turn; rest of us don't agree. Any thoughts?

I have only played the older versions a couple of times, but seem to remember that suppression of the enemy was way more important than kills. It takes a bit to get used to that. Sure it's annoying when the hits are removed, but the enemy can't do much when suppressed.